The rationale used by the Sarasota County elections office and the manufacturers of the voting machines is that people in just this county were repulsed by the nehgative advertising. Now I've seen a loit of weirdness in my life and when I was once an inkstained wretch, but I have NEVER seen voter disgust that began or ended at a jurisdictional line. As if people in, say, Precinct 347 were so disgusted they wouldn't vote in a particular contest, but voters in Precinct 622 would.

The hell of it is, if the votes had come in, maybe the Republican guy would have pulled ahead and made the race conclusive. Who knows? By gullibly buying whiz-bang voter machines, the elections office did a major disservice to both candidates.

By the way, I like the state governbment's words that we should declare teh Republican guy a winner to have "closure." Isn't that what you say after a funeral or after a murderer is executed? That wasn't the best choice of words.

Diebold has done it again.What is wrong with a paper ballot and a pen or pencil,18,380 voters forgot the congress? Typical repugnican BULLSHIT. Isn't the governor a distant relative of the worst president in history, like brother? Outlaw the shrubs in all guises and the voting machines with them.

But voters of both sides need to have faith in the system. Hopefully the democratic party will help in the legal fees. They should consider it an investment and this WILL come up again in 2008.

As much as we all may hate Diebold the machines in question were made by another company.

I am a little curious about this idea of a new election. Who would be allowed to vote? Only those who cast a ballot on Nov.7 or any registered voter in the county? Seems to me that with a margin that small and so many votes lost a new election is in order. Unless they can prove that the problem is the result of voter incompetence which seems unlikely since the undervote percentage in other counties was so much smaller.

If the GOP's explanation is true, they should be able to rustle up thousands of people who did undervote for the reasons that they project. I supposed the GOP could try to fulfil my requirement by producing thousands of people who LIE and say they did undervote on purpose. I would like to see them try: it would be sworn testimony.

Failing that, the voting machines and counting machines need to be secured and then analyzed by computer professionals. Our party could provide a few names from the Rolodex.

I'm not at all surprised about the reported undervote in Jenning's race and applaud efforts to force a full recount. But I am worried about the lack of concern expressed by the small number of writers about this story.

Sadly, too few voters have made an effort to learn about the dangers of e-voting and the potential for fraud - on large and small scale - that exists.

While we were distracted with watching Kenneth Blackwell's Ohio to insure that he didn't pull a "2004" again, we lost sight of Florida---a situation that is indicative of what has been happening throughout the country but not reported by major media.

Let's look at New Mexico in 2004. Thanks to investigative writer Greg Palast in his newest book Armed Madhouse we learn how those electoral votes were sewed up by Bush. From a section of the state bordering Texas - called Little Texas - to cities like Albuquerque and Taos, Native-American and Hispanic voters were cheated out of their democratic right to vote. Bush won New Mexico by only 5,988 ballots while 21,084 ballots showed no vote for president at all! How did this happen? Old, malfunctioning machines were placed in minority precincts, while new ones went to heavily caucasian republican precincts. Voters repeatedly reported vote jumps on the screen from democrats to republicans. In one precinct, Kerry's name didn't appear on the tally sheet---not the ballot, but the tally sheet! Some precincts showed more votes than registered voters (a similar things happened in Ohio, by the way) and all of those "ghosts" voted for Bush. But the practice that Palast facetiously calls "Brown Ballot Boycott" is the most obvious practice of all. Apparently hundreds of Latino and Native American voters drove long distances, stood in long lines, and then didn't cast a vote for president. Strange way to protest, don't you think? And how about those absentee ballots from overseas? More than 200 cast by primarily Mexican-American military personnel also showed no vote for their commander-in-chief or his opponent---or so the voting machines, which also tally the votes, tell us.

If you don't like or trust Palast, how about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., or the Brookings Institute, or TV's Lou Dobbs, or technology experts from prestigious places like Princeton and Johns Hopkins Universities, and groups like Black Box Voting, or middle-of-the-road, progressive and liberal speakers, writers, and internet blogs? How about members of Congress like Michigan's John Conyers and others?

We must not become complacent because of the victories this past election. We should be suspicious, frankly, about some of the quick concessions in a few House and Senate races. They're betting on us being so sure of potential success in regaining the White House in 2008, that I'm certain Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and their neocon friends - who are friends with those who make, sell and program the machines - are already plotting how they're going to stick it to us in the BIG election, when every election jurisdiction in this country will be on line with HAVA and will have installed electronic voting machines.

One writer commented that the e-machines used in the Jennings-Buchanan race weren't Diebold.

Please, please don't fixate upon Diebold, folks! They weren't even the first company to produce e-machines, although their involvement in pushing HAVA down our throats should be a matter of concern.

My own inadequate research turned up this: One company, called Election Systems and Software (ES&S) was formed in the early 1980s under the name of Data Mark by two brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich. Today, Bob works (as its president, replacing disgraced Wally O'Dell) for Diebold and Todd remains with ES&S, serving as its Vice President. At some point in time, ES&S acquired American Information Systems, owned and headed by Senator Chuck Hagel, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. Sequoia Voting Systems, another of the top e-machine manufacturers, is owned by foreign investors through a tangled web of sales and purchases. It merged with Smartmatic in 2005, which was begun by two Venezuelan engineers (one of whom has been refused a U.S. visa but still has sold machines here---including to the Chicago Chicago). This is NOT complete list of current e-machine companies operating in this country.

Then there are the start-ups. We need to closely watch them because, if the biggies go (or are taken) down, there are several small ones waiting to step into their places. One of the newest is Populex, out of northern Illinois, which has on its board of directors former CIA deputy director Frank Calucci. Odd? Not at all. Sitting on the board of another company involved in developing internet voting is Robert Gates. Ah! There's a not-so-new name. He's been nominated to replace Donald Rumsfeld, hasn't he? The internet-vote-development company is named VoteHere. Others sitting on the boards of companies counting our votes are James Woolsey, Bobby Ray Inman and John Deutsch.

So, although Diebold has received the most publicity regarding its e-voting machines, they aren't by any means the only one making a lot of money from HAVA--which was started merely as a bribe to make election jurisdictions purchase electronic machines and discard their old (usually effective ) voting methods. And although the others may not be found - yet - to be less-than-honest in development and operation of their hardware and software, that doesn't mean it won't happen at some future time....if we allow that to happen.

We CANNOT allow ourselves to become complacent. We can't allow ourselves to become distracted by a single manufacturer. We cannot allow "them" to take away our right to vote!